"Get in."

'Sometimes I wonder. I really do.'

The city is cloaked in a messy, clammy soup of fog and stench of overflow from the great kelp farms which cover it many kilometers above.

"I said.....get in."

Hundreds of meters below the great throngs of unthinking people once again parade the boulevard as if nothing had happened just a short while ago.

The Chinee, floating in his food bum-boat, is watching from across the way; as if he doesn't see what is going on.

"How long do you have?"

"I've got all the time in the world."

"I've got 25 minutes. Like I said, get in."

I nod and step to the side of the balcony and open the access panel. With a smooth shuushing sound a walkway extends from the sleek, black, patrol car. The door is cantilevered forward so as to not get in the way.

I step into space, hundreds of meters above the people below; and my foot encounters the slowly rocking walkway.

The door closes behind me and The Lieutenant of Gendarmes pulls the cruiser smoothly into the outbound lane. He punches a button on the control wheel and the car settles itself into the middle speed lane of level 43, Boulevard West.

"Ok, so how are you feeling?"

"Ok I guess, guess as good as it will be for a while yet."

"I actually never considered before what might happen to the skin when somebody hung from somebody's hand like that for a long time. O' course ya see the vids and stuff. All that dramatic stuff about somebody saving somebody, but, well, ya never really know, do ya?"

"No, you never really know I guess."

As the cruiser neared the great open space of the shore line of MegaCity West the Lieutenant pressed a few keys and the cruiser lazily swung into the southbound lane of the outer corridors.

"Umm is your Kub off?"

"Yes. Why?"

"So, how about you tell me what you saw during all that."

"Same thing you saw I imagine, don't know that I can add much to the videos."

"Ummm well, there a...aren't any videos."

Well, that kinda makes my jaw drop.

"Whadaya mean no videos? There are ALWAYS videos of everything that happens in the City. There's no part of the City that isn't under surveillance. At least that what everybody thinks, including me. Well, except maybe down in the beltways."

"You're right. The City is completely under surveillance at all times and all places, with maybe the exception of what goes on under the beltways, like you said."

"So, I'll expose my ignorance of all things security-wise and ask why."

"I really don't know. While the fracas was occurring the people on the skin of the buildings were ordered to move in-building, no questions asked. So, there are almost no eye witnesses to anything that happened, and the few that there are have been diagnosed as being so traumatized that they have all been shipped off to dachas in Meso Mexico for rehabilitation. The people that survived the massacre have also been sent south, and will probably never be heard of again. They're all replaceable anyway."

"I've never heard of anything like that."

"Neither have I until now. As to the cameras, well, it seems that for some reason all the feeds were lost due to some kind of interference."

"Oh?"

"The problem is.... that the few Gendarmes that were involved on the ground and lived to tell the tale said that 'Yes, the person that seemed to be controlling whatever was going on was having his people flash something at the cameras in the first of the attack', but that would not account for the total loss of video."

"A guy was controlling things?"

"Yes, apparently some guy on some kind of big ....well don't know what to call it, some kind of 'sled" the Gendarmes said. It kind of floated, like an anti-grav unit but not like anything they had seen."

"So what did they see?"

"Well, they report seeing hundreds and hundreds of some kind of very large animals, they called them "wolves". But, as you know, being an Educator, wolves have been extinct on the continent for well into a thousand years."

"Ok, wolves."

"And there were maybe twenty-odd men, they thought, in some kind of black armor that seemed to be directing the wolves with... um...well....some kind of...maybe radios, or something. And the men were on some kind of anti-grav devices also. Kind of like disks. They stood on the disks.".

"I didn't see anything like that. All I saw were the animals. Have you had access to any post-mortems on them? Were they wolves?"

"Well, again.... there were no bodies, except of people that is. No bodies of the wolves."

"What!?"

The Lieutenant tapped a few buttons and the big cruiser swung in a lazy arc out over the Silent Sea, hung a uie, and slipped back into the northbound traffic.

"Right. No bodies. However, that is not some kind of maybe cover up like the missing video feeds might be."

'He's letting THAT hang pregnantly in the air...'

"The best reports we have are from the crews and vids of the ships involved in the strafing and the ship that picked you up."

The big man shifted in his seat and wipes an arm on the inside of the lexglass although the air conditioning was keeping it completely clear.

"It seems that after you were picked up, and the strafing was beginning to do real damage, that the....well.... the animals that were alive picked up the dead ones and carried them off in their mouths....and again at the direction of the men on the disks.
.........And then there was some kind of real....don't know...'pulse' as the crews can best describe it. And the pilots lost control of their ships. The ships weren't destroyed or anything, they were just well, left floating with no control. That lasted for maybe five minutes, the animals were all gone and then they regained control."

"So.... I don't really think I understand any of this, but, what about the forensic teams. What did they find on scene?"


"Whatever.... they found is top secret, ....eyes only,.... classified. But, I have my ways, still, don't know how long I'll have them, but .... about all that they found was some kind of quasi synthetic slash natural hair and skin traces and shards of some kind of exotic metal alloy, maybe some lubricants.....supposedly from the impact of the bullets from the strafing on some kind of....'frame' in the animals? I don't know and I really had to pull in some favours for what I got."

"Hmmmm ok..not much to go on is there? So, what about the Kubs; nothing from them?"

"I don't know, can't seem to get a handle on that either. One would think that with the massive information systems we have that something would have leaked out to where I could get a-hold of it. But, no."

"I'll talk to Ke.."

"No, not a word to her. Don't get involved with this in any way that is going to get you into the system about it."

"Okaaay..., so.... then....why are we having this little ride? I mean this really is a very nice car; and it says something about your place in the Gendarmes, but why..."

"You're smart. Very smart. That is one reason why you are an Educator. That's why I sent the woman to you. You can put things together in your mind in ways that other people don't see."

"Aannnd..."

The Oriental lady in the blimp is winking at me as we approach my apartment complex. The Lieutenant taps a couple of buttons and the cruiser slides smoothly out of the traffic and hangs a uie and pulls up to bob slowly up and down outside my apartment.

The rain has stopped and a mist creeps into the cruiser as the door cantilevers itself aside. The ramp shusshes it's way toward the balcony.

"I want you to meet someone."

"Oh? Who?"

"Nobody you know. But people who really are in power know him. He's stays off the grid as it were; and has been doing so for a very long time."

"So you'll get in touch with me?"

"No, he'll get in touch with you."

"How will I know him?"

"By the hobnail crosses on the heels of his boots."



Addendum: there are two lines which are homages to a certain sci-fi film.